The name of Brindley is always associated with the building of Great Britain's canal system, which was begun more than 100 years before the great inter-oceanic waterways such as the Suez and Panama Canals
DIVIDING AN ISTHMUS, the Corinth Canal links the Aegean Sea with the Gulf of Corinth and the Ionian Sea. Cut in 1882-93, the canal is absolutely straight for its entire length of 6,937 yards (nearly four miles). It is 25 yards wide at the bottom and 26 feet deep. The cutting has a maximum depth of 260 feet. The canal is crossed by the railway from Athens to Corinth.
IT is difficult in these days of railways, cars and aircraft to realize the importance of the part played in transport, not so long ago, by canals — not the ship canals of to-day which unite oceans, but internal waterways designed to take nothing larger than barges and small craft proceeding at a snail’s pace. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the face of Great Britain, as of many other countries, became gradually covered by a network of canals and locks — largely still existing — designed to give cheaper, more convenient and often quicker transport than could be obtained with the only alternative then available: the clumsy, horse-drawn lorries of limited capacity, painfully ploughing their way along a main-road system which a modern surveyor would promptly condemn as “unsuitable for wheeled traffic”.
In the days of George IV a bargeload of goods could be sent from London to Liverpool, from Gloucester to King’s Lynn (Norfolk), from Chester to Lincoln, and anywhere between hundreds of intermediate points dotted over a canal system whose branches had a total length of some 2,500 miles. The system was still growing at that time.
An ambitious scheme was on foot, for example, for running a large canal, to take craft of up to 200 tons burden, from London to Portsmouth, by way of Tonbridge (Kent) and Arundel (Sussex). The “Grand Southern Canal” (as it was to be called) got only as far as Camberwell, London, but on the engineering side its construction was perfectly practicable. The scheme fell through, as did many others of the time, because of the advent and rapid development of railways.
Once demonstrated, the advantages of rail transport were obvious. Apart from the enormous gain in speed, the difficulties of construction were far less. Gradients, it is true, were the bane of the early railway lines; the surveyors, planning for underpowered engines and clumsy rolling stock, would go miles out of the direct route to circumvent them as far as possible. Even so, it was simpler to lay out a route for a railway than for a canal, which must necessarily consist, in the main, of dead-level stretches interspersed by locks. Hence it came about that although in 1820 there was a good deal of capital available for investment in canals, by 1840, the early days of the railways, there was none at all.
In the story of British canals, two names, the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley, stand out above all others. The first of all British navigation canals was built in 1760-61 between Worsley (Lancashire) and Manchester, ten miles away. Its projector was Francis, third Duke of Bridgewater, owner of the collieries, and it was designed and built by James Brindley.
In 1759 Brindley was recommended to the duke as a likely man to carry out the canal project. Bridgewater was improving his estates. Manchester, even then a thriving town, but almost destitute of communications, was in continual need of coal. The duke owned a large colliery at Worsley, only a few miles away; yet the cost of transporting the coal, on horseback, from the mine to the River Irwell, and so by barge to Manchester, more than doubled its price at the pithead. The Mersey Navigation Company, which then held the legal monopoly of transport on the Irwell, exacted a charge of 3s. 6d. for every ton of coal moved along it, however short the distance, even if the duke sent it in his own barges. He determined to rid himself of this incubus, and in 1760 he obtained Parliamentary powers for a direct canal from Worsley to Manchester.
If he had searched the United Kingdom, or even the whole of Europe, he doubtless could not have met with a more suitable engineer than Brindley. Brindley’s sagacity and resourcefulness suggested that he must have spent his whole life in canal building, instead of being the pioneer of all such works in Great Britain, and tackling his first job of the kind.
Brindley’s first move was to obtain, through the duke, further Parliamentary powers, enabling the route and plan of the new canal to be amended. It had, in any event, to cross the Irwell at Barton, and the duke had intended to do this by making it descend to river level in a series of locks, and ascend in the same way. Brindley rejected this plan absolutely. He pointed out that an artificial canal should never be allowed to mix its waters with those of a river, because of the risk of flooding in wet weather. Also, since both ends of the canal would, in any event, be at much the same height above sea level, he proposed to make them exactly so, and to dispense with locks altogether, keeping the whole canal at one level throughout its entire length. He would carry the canal across the Irwell on an aqueduct.
This part of the scheme was received with complete incredulity. The idea of carrying ships, on a lofty bridge, over the mastheads of other ships on the Irwell flowing underneath struck most people as the dream of a lunatic. Even the duke’s confidence in Brindley was shaken enough to make him call for a second opinion before proceeding. The other engineer condemned the plan altogether, remarking, “I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before saw where any of them were to be erected”. However, Brindley’s practical commonsense explanations ultimately removed the duke’s misgivings, and the aqueduct went forward. Composed of three semicircular arches, the aqueduct carried the canal over the Irwell at a height of thirty-nine feet, enabling the biggest sailing barges to pass underneath without striking their masts. The stones forming the canal trough were held together by iron cramps as well as cement, and the trough itself was made watertight by “puddling” — lining it with continuous, thick, superimposed layers of stiff clay which had been kneaded up with water. Puddling was Brindley’s main cure for all hydraulic troubles in connexion with his canals.
On one occasion his men reported a serious leak in a canal bank, and were laconically directed to “puddle it”. This having been done without effect, they sought further advice, and were told “puddle it again”. The second application proved successful. If not, a third would undoubtedly have been recommended by Brindley.
MULTIPLE BUCKET EXCAVATOR at work on a new canal near Magdeburg, Germany. An endless chain of massive buckets, similar to those of dredger is supported on a movable boom. The excavator runs on rails laid alongside the lina of the excavation.
Apart from the Barton aqueduct, which was universally and justly regarded as the main feature of the whole undertaking, Brindley tackled several other difficult engineering problems, and cleared them more or less in his stride. He built an earth embankment half a mile long, and ran the canal along a puddled trough at its summit. He crossed the bog known as Trafford Moss in the same way as George Stephenson, long afterwards, took the Liverpool—Manchester line across Chat Moss — by “floating” his embankment on loose material spread out over the surface of the bog itself. Various streams which would have flowed into the canal were dropped to a lower level over weirs, and passed under the canal by culverts. At the Worsley end, the canal tunnelled into the rock of the colliery itself for over a mile, reaching the heart of the working; at the Manchester end, at the foot of Castle Hill, a crane driven by a 30-feet waterwheel hoisted the crates of coal to summit level. “The Duke's Canal” was opened on July 17, 1761, and forthwith halved the retail price of coal at Manchester.
Brindley and his patron promptly took in hand a second and more ambitious project — the extension of their canal from Manchester to the Mersey. This was opposed tooth and nail by the Mersey Navigation Company and, the duke being a staunch Whig, became a political issue. However, the Act for the new canal was piloted safely through Parliament. Brindley was called as a witness at the Committee stage, and created much amusement by sending out for some clay and giving a practical and most convincing demonstration of the process of “puddling”. After nine weeks he returned to Worsley with the tidings that the Act was passed, and set about his new canal.
This, as completed, was twenty-four miles long, making the total length of the Bridgewater system just over thirty-four miles. The total cost of the whole enterprise (some £220,000 in all, plus £168,000 for the underground workings at Worsley) was borne by the duke from his own resources. Brindley, as he had done with the original portion of the canal, kept the extension at a uniform level all the way from Manchester to Runcorn, the point of its junction with the Mersey, where it descended to river level in a series of locks. Sale Moor Moss was crossed in the same manner as Trafford Moss, and with equal success.
Again Brindley demonstrated his resourcefulness and ingenuity by fitting floodgates to prevent damage to low-lying land in the event of a breach in the canal banks. He also devised floating forges, carpenters’ shops and masons’ shops, which advanced along the canal as the extension proceeded; double-hulled ballast barges for transporting and dumping material; and even a primitive steam engine for pumping.
Brindley designed and executed many other canals, his greatest work of the kind being the Grand Trunk Canal, which was still in progress when he died in 1772, and was completed some years later. Begun in 1766 after the usual fierce local and Parliamentary opposition, it started from “ The Duke’s Canal ” at Preston-on-the-Hill, near Runcorn, and ran south-eastward through the Potteries district, afterwards descending the valley of the Trent and ultimately uniting with that river at Wilden Ferry, not far from Derby. From this point the navigation of the river was unobstructed right down to the Humber.
CANAL, RAIL AND ROAD cross one another in one place at Hanwell, Middlesex. A Great Western branch line passes under, and a road over, the Grand Union Canal. This canal is 240 miles long, including branches, and links the River Thames with the Midlands.
In the Grand Trunk Canal, which penetrated into the heart of the Midlands, Brindley was compelled to depart from his former plan of avoiding locks. The summit of the canal, at Harecastle (395 feet above sea level), was reached from the Mersey through thirty-five locks; and forty more were required for the descent to Wilden (289 feet above sea level). No fewer than 160 aqueducts were required — one, across the River Dove, having twenty-three arches and a total length of more than a mile. The most formidable part of the undertaking, however, was the building of five tunnels which Brindley designed to reduce the number of lockings as far as possible. One tunnel, that at Harecastle, is 2,880 yards long, and is driven through solid rock.
Here Brindley’s experience of tunnelling at Worsley stood him in good stead. He tackled the Harecastle tunnel on perfectly sound lines, working from the ends and from intermediate points, reached by sinking vertical shafts to canal level. The spoil was hoisted through these shafts, and windmill-pumps at their summits kept the workings clear of water. If, as sometimes happened, the tunnellers were “drowned out”, this mishap was put right by steam pumps; and eventually the driftways were united from end to end and the water (afterwards valuable as a “feeder” to the canal) was led out at both ends. The tunnel, as completed, was only nine feet wide and twelve feet high (a larger, parallel tunnel was afterwards built by Thomas Telford). As these dimensions left no room for a towpath, barges were propelled through the tunnel by “legging”, the boatmen lying on their backs on the deck and pushing against the roof with their feet.
The Harecastle Tunnel, the last portion of the Grand Trunk Canal to be completed, was opened in 1777. By then, the great engineer who had designed it had been in his grave some five years. Brindley had died in 1772. He was only fifty-six.
First Ship Canal
Much canal engineering was done by Brindley’s successors — some of them celebrated men. For instance, John Smeaton, of Eddystone Lighthouse fame, designed and built many canals, including one between the Forth and the Clyde which, after many delays, was opened in 1790. John Rennie, too, was also a great canal engineer. But the first canal to depart from the general lines laid down by Brindley was the Caledonian Canal, designed by Thomas Telford and built by him in 1804-22.
It was the first canal of the modern type — a ship canal, as opposed to Brindley’s barge canals. Although a commercial failure, the plan of the Caledonian Canal was sound enough and had often been brought forward earlier. Scotland is almost divided, from south-west to north-east, by a rift valley, portions of which, filled with water, form a chain of three lochs: Locliy, Oich and Ness. Lying end to end, these lochs have a total length of some forty miles. Another twenty miles of canal would unite them with one another and with the sea at either end, forming a water passage from the Atlantic to the North Sea and short-circuiting the stormy and often dangerous passage northabout, through the Minch and the Pentland Firth. Before the days of steam such a canal, if large enough to accommodate sailing ships of moderate size, had many advantages, and as early as 1773 we find James Watt making a survey of the route. Rennie also drew up a scheme for a canal of the kind, in 1793, but the project slumbered until the Napoleonic Wars.
THE CRINAN CANAL was built between 1783 and 1801, and is still in use to-day. It connects Loch Gilp (Argyllshire), an arm of Loch Fyne, with the Sound of Jura, and enables small craft to avoid the often stormy voyage round the Mull of Kintyre. The canal is nine miles long and contains fifteen locks.
Telford, already well known as a bridge builder, was entrusted by the Government with the work. Operations began in 1803. As originally planned, the canal was to pass a 32-gun frigate of the day, fully equipped and with all stores on board. It was therefore designed to be 20 feet deep, 120 feet wide at the surface and 50 feet wide at the bottom. The canal can accommodate any vessel not exceeding 160 feet long, 38 feet in beam and 14 feet in draught. The summit level of the canal, at Loch Oich, is 100 feet above sea level, and the ascent to this from the western entrance, at Corpach, is made by fifteen locks, of which a contiguous series of eight, at Banavie, is known as “Neptune’s Staircase”. From Loch Oich the descent is made through a succession of fourteen locks to sea level at Inverness.
For its period, the building of the Caledonian Canal was a creditable, but unfortunately also an expensive undertaking. Its unusual size, and the difficulties encountered with the steadily rising cost of labour and materials, delayed its completion and swelled its cost far above the original estimate. Once opened, it was comparatively little used. The advent of steam navigation offset most of the advantages claimed for the canal.
A Political Issue
Probably the most frequented ship canal in the world is the Suez Canal. It was not the first interoceanic canal, for the great Languedoc Canal, the “Canal du Midi”, which runs from Cette to the River Garonne (at Toulouse) and thus connects the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, was completed as long ago as 1681. But the Suez Canal was the first to rouse world-wide interest; and it is also remarkable for being at sea level, without a lock of any kind throughout the whole of its length.
The idea of forming a water passage between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was not only considered but also put into practice by the ancient Egyptians. In the Middle Ages, too, the Republic of Venice, finding that its former commerce with India was falling into the hands of the Portuguese, discussed (1504) the practicability of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Suez and so opening up an all-water trade route eastward to India. Again, Napoleon Bonaparte, when starting for his Egyptian adventure, received secret instructions (April 12, 1798) enacting, amongst other objectives, that “the Commander-in-Chief shall have the Isthmus of Suez cut through, and he shall take the necessary steps to assure the free and exclusive possession of the Red Sea to the French Republic”.
Any efforts, however, which Napoleon may have intended to make in conformity with these curt directions were stopped at the outset by a blunder. One of his engineers, Le Père, carried a line of levels across the isthmus, and deduced from his observations that the level of the Red Sea was more than 30 feet above that of the Mediterranean. He, therefore, reported against the proposal to join the two by a direct cut, and proposed a new indirect canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, costing 25 to 30 million francs.
THREE PAIRS OF LOCKS at Thorold, on the Welland Canal, raise or lower ships a distance of 139^ feet. The locks are arranged in pairs to allow uninterrupted navigation in either direction. Each lock is 859 feet long and 80 feet wide. In the foreground is a typical Great Lakes grain ship.
There being no difference of average sea level at all, it seems certain that Le Père’s observations must have been vitiated by abnormal and unsuspected refraction, but his conclusions were not finally disproved until 1847. This action revived the canal project, and events took a decisive turn when, in 1854, the Egyptian Government granted to Ferdinand de Lesseps a concession for building a canal across the isthmus of Suez. The Suez Canal is approximately a hundred miles long, sixty-six and a half miles of this being canal and the rest a dredged channel running through Lake Timsah and the Great and Little Bitter Lakes. The work was formally begun on April 25, 1859. The most important preliminary step was the building of the present Freshwater Canal, running parallel with the route of the ship canal, and designed to supply the workers with drinking water. The work of excavation offered no particularly formidable difficulties. At. first, reliance was chiefly placed on methods such as the ancient Egyptians might have used — digging by using local labour. After the authorities, however, had appreciated the slow rate of progress that this entailed, steam-operated excavators and dredgers were used wherever possible. The story of the various diplomatic intrigues in which the
Powers concerned engaged during the building of the canal is not an edifying one. More than once de Lesseps saw his beloved project within an ace of being irretrievably wrecked. But he held on unflinchingly, and his reward came on November 17, 1869, when ships of all nations assembled at Port Said to witness the official opening of the canal.
Since then the history of the canal has been a story of steady development and ever-increasing use. Although, in spite of Disraeli’s dramatic purchase of the Khedive’s shares in 1875, the British Government holds less than half of the total shares, more than half the traffic using the canal has always been British shipping. In recent years the canal has been made available for night traffic as well as day, the average time of through transit being about thirteen hours.
Since the opening of the Suez Canal, several other ship canals of importance have been undertaken and completed. There is, for example, the Dutch North Sea Canal, seventeen miles long, affording a direct route from Amsterdam to the sea. Begun in 1863 and completed in 1876, it replaced the old North Holland Canal of 1818, a tortuous waterway no less than fifty-two miles long. In 1882-93 a four miles’ canal was cut, at sea level, through the Isthmus of Corinth; and 1887 witnessed the start of two separate enterprises, each famous in its own way — the Manchester Ship Canal and the Kiel Canal, connecting the Baltic with the North Sea. The Kiel Canal (officially named the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal) is sixty-one miles long, and when first opened in 1895 had a width of 72 feet and a depth of 29½ feet. In 1907 the work of enlarging and deepening it was put in hand, and its completion synchronized with the outbreak of war in 1914.
For National Defence
The narrow neck of land connecting North America with South America is the most obvious place in the world for a ship canal. Schemes for cutting a canal here began to make their appearance almost within the lifetime of Christopher Columbus.
The real history of the Panama Canal may be said to begin on New Year’s Day, 1880, when the French Panama Canal Company began operations. At its head was de Lesseps. He was seventy-five, but as optimistic as ever — perhaps even more so. At any rate, he seemed to draw no distinction between past and present conditions — between Suez, with nothing except soft sand to be dug out, abundance of local labour, and a comparatively healthy climate, and Panama, where a range of low hills had to be surmounted or cut, where native labour was almost unobtainable and where the climatic conditions were, as the event showed, absolutely deadly.
De Lesseps planned to drive a canal, at sea level, from Colon on the Atlantic to Panama on the Pacific, traversing the rocky backbone of the Isthmus at Culebra. His selection of this route was afterwards endorsed by the United States engineers, who succeeded (although with a lock canal) where he had failed.
The French effort, however, was doomed to failure. Even de Lesseps’ prestige and eloquence were unequal to securing more than about half the capital required, at the lowest estimation. Such money as was available was rapidly squandered in a campaign of misrepresentation and speculation which rapidly assumed the proportions of a national scandal. Before long, too, reports came filtering through of how the workmen and officials at Panama were dying in thousands of yellow fever.
THE WELLAND CANAL, a vital link in the Great Lakes system. This photograph shows the progress made by 1929 with the section illustrated above. The new canal—the fourth to be built between Lakes Erie and Ontario—cost more than £24,000,000 and was opened in 1932.
De Lesseps had originally announced that the canal would be completed in 1889. He afterwards deferred the opening date to 1891, at the same time announcing that “as a temporary expedient” the plan of the canal would be altered to one with locks. The bubble burst in 1889, however, for the company went bankrupt, and an official investigation disclosed that of its subscribed capital (about £53,000,000) nothing whatever remained. Less than a tenth of the canal had been completed, and some 18,000 of the workers had succumbed to fever. De Lesseps himself died, a physical and mental wreck, in December 1893, aged 88.
The events of the Spanish-American War (1898-1900), and particularly the dramatic dash made by the U.S. battleship Oregon from Pacific waters, round Cape Horn to the Philippines, impressed upon the United States Government the necessity of building the Panama Canal as a measure of national defence. In 1902 this was ultimately authorized. The interests of the French Panama Company were being bought up and an agreement was made, shortly afterwards, with the newly established Republic of Panama for the permanent cession of a zone embracing the canal route.
The first step, with which the name of Colonel William C. Gorgas will always be associated, was to stamp out, as far as humanly possible, yellow fever throughout the canal zone. This was eventually accomplished by the adoption of anti-mosquito measures of amazing scope and thoroughness. Meanwhile, the general plan of the great undertaking had been gradually taking shape. After advice had been sought from the most eminent civil engineers of the United States and of Europe, it crystallized into a decision to build the canal with locks — not, as had been previously intended, at sea level throughout.
Landslide Danger Overcome
The direction of the whole work on the canal was entrusted to Lieut.-Col. George W. Goethals, of the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers, who conducted it to a successful conclusion with outstanding ability. The canal was completed in 1914, but was not opened for regular use until 1916.
From the Atlantic, at Colon, a seven-miles reach at sea level leads to the huge Gatun Locks, a series of three twin locks each of whose six chambers measures 1,000 feet long by 110 feet wide and 70 feet deep. By these three stages ships are lifted a total of 85 feet, and emerge into the waters of the Gatun Lake, an artificial lake thirty miles long, and some 160 square miles in area, formed by damming the waters of the Chagres River. At the southern end of the lake ships enter the Culebra or Gaillard Cut, eight miles long, the most difficult section of the whole canal to build. It had to be driven through the rock which forms the backbone of the isthmus. Although it is hard, this material is so treacherous and liable to “weather” that small landslips are still common. The Culebra Cut has more than once been blocked, by large landslides, for months at a time. It was blocked in this way, for instance, from September 1915 to April 1916. The likelihood of further landslides on this' scale is row slight. Speed in the cut, however, is still restricted, as a measure of precaution, to six knots and dredgers work every night removing any accumulated detritus.
Once through the Culebra Cut, the descent to the Pacific begins. No suitable place could be found for building a series of three contiguous locks, as at Gatun, so that a single pair of locks at Pedro Miguel lowers vessels 30 feet into Miraflores Lake, and two other sets of locks at Miraflores, a mile farther on, step them down the remaining 55 feet or so (depending on the state of the tide) into the Pacific. The average time of transit through the Canal is eight hours, but faster ships can make the passage in six hours.
ONE OF THE FOUR LOCKS on the Juliana Canal, one ot the most recent of the many canals in the Netherlands. The Juliana Canai leaves the River Maas at Maasbracht and rejoins it at Maastricht; it is about 21 miles long. The lock at Roosteren (shown above) is 446 feet long and 46 feet wide.
Click here to see the photogravure supplement to this chapter.
